Now that Donald Trump will be returning to the White House, the actions the adminstration could take to reduce prices, including those paid at the pump, are coming into focus.

Gas prices are trending down is helpful for the Trump adminstration

Energy prices rose rapidly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on global energy markets. Though they have softened, they remained a concern for many voters. Since average gas prices hit a staggering $5.10 in mid-June 22, they have come down 37 percent to $3.18. The COVID-19 pandemic caused demand for gas to plummet, and prices fell along with it. However, if we look at the average price for a gallon from 2017 to 2019, drivers were paying around $2.70. Next year, the government’s Energy Information Adminstration forecasts that the gallon with cost drivers $3.20, on average, a figure on par with current prices. Forecasts can be redrawn if, early in the year, a law is passed that would impact petroleum prices, but it is important to consider that many factors within production cannot be quickly altered. New leases to drill may be made available, but building the infrastructure and getting additional material out of the ground is another question. Already, fossil fuel producers are sitting on unused land.

Donald Trump’s promise to ‘unleash American energy’

Donald Trump talked a lot about gasoline prices at the pump on the campaign stump, often pointing to the low prices drivers paid during his adminstration. However, global energy markets are in a very different place than before the pandemic, and the adminstration will have to craft policy within that new environment. While the Biden adminstration oversaw petroleum production levels break records, Donald Trump and the Republican party campaigned on ‘unleashing American energy,’ and with production stats where they currently are, an ‘even further’ should be attached to the policy objective.

But this plan, even if able to bring down gas prices in the short-term, creates tradeoffs. As many families in North Carolina and Florida saw their homes, and in some cases, entire communities destroyed by deadly storms this fall, gasoline prices are only one part of a household’s budget. The Biden administration’s allowing fossil fuel production to increase has come as warnings from climate scientists detailed in reports became a reality for millions. Economists often look at both the short and long-term costs and benefits. Donald Trump’s energy policy brings into conflict the short-term gains of increased fossil fuel production on American pocketbooks and the long-term costs of pushing emissions higher and higher. Some are already paying those costs, as insurance companies refuse to cover damage from natural disasters that climate change will make more common, intense, and harder to predict. The growing threat of natural disasters to people’s lives posed by climate change demonstrates that the economic benefits of certain policies must be contextualized within the dangers they can create.

That debate was missing from this election. Neither major party was ready to facilitate a conversation about how the country could reduce its reliance on fossil fuels in a manner that protects the needs and interests of the public both today and a few decades from now. Climate change and its devastating impacts are here; if action is not taken, those effects will worsen. The Yale Climate Opinion survey from 2023 found that 72 percent of people. believe climate change is happening, though only 58 percent believe it is human-caused. The data shows that most of the public believes that humans are causing climate change and that the effects are being felt. That should allow for a healthy debate on what should be done. What actions are needed to protect lives and the communities they embody? What costs is the public willing to bear to leave a better earth to future generations?

The answers to these questions might be uncomfortable, especially if one’s quality of life is placed in opposition to climate action. When sixty percent of workers live paycheck to paycheck, they are forced to vote with their pocketbooks, if they even feel compelled to vote. When falling into poverty, or a decline in one’s quality of life, can happen however hard one works to avoid such an outcome, access to basic goods becomes central to politics. The long-term economic implications of climate change become far less pertinent in day-to-day decision-making when a household is experiencing a financial crisis. It doesn’t even mean that voters aren’t worried about the world their children and grandchildren will inherit, but mouths need to be fed today. The danger of the politics around climate change is that fossil fuel corporations and the lobbyists and politicians they control have an interest in framing climate action as a threat to the average person’s quality of life. Industry insiders are happy to accept climate change’s scientific reality and the sector’s willingness to support climate action so long as it falls within the confines of what it views as reasonable, with investments in carbon capture, energy efficiency, and carbon pricing as examples. That sort of politics makes increasing fossil production to reduce gasoline prices the common-sense approach to tamping down inflation. Policies that would expand public transportation systems or make cities safer and more pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists aren’t because those weaken the dependence of their consumer base.

The danger of the politics around climate change is that fossil fuel corporations and the lobbyists and politicians they control have an interest in framing climate action as a threat to the average person’s quality of life. That sort of politics makes increasing fossil production to reduce gasoline prices the common sense approach to tamping down inflation. When the profits generated from that increase in production smash records, those same leaders look the other way and fill the silence on questions related to climate change with a minimal pledge to protect access to clean air and water. There is another path forward that does not place well-being in conflict with climate action and instead shows how the two can be mutually beneficial. New jobs are building a climate-adapted infrastructure that is more resilient in the face of severe weather—determining as a society how the transition away from fossil fuel will happen rather than debating if it will. For the US public, coming to grips with the need to move away from a society so reliant and beholden to fossil fuels is an enormous task. It is a task not made any easier by the fact that neither major political faction seems interested in even facilitating that process.

US production is not the only factor that impacts gas prices

Under a Democratic adminstration, petroleum production hit its highest level in US history, and gas prices went down. When Vice President-elect Vance was confronted with where production levels sit during his debate with Tim Walz, he ignored the point and did not respond. Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress, possibly joined by some Democrats, could likely vote to increase fossil fuel production even further in the US. The first Trump administration paid little attention to the need to protect nature during that process. Lastly, the notion that increasing production in the US will ensure a reduction in energy prices for consumers fails to consider the impact of other petroleum producers, including OPEC, whose presence massively influences global and domestic prices. As producers in the US continued to increase production, in part because the federal government was offering major contracts if prices dropped to refill the national reserves, OPEC members cut production to protect their profits.

The second Trump administration and Saudi Arabia

The global landscape in which Donald Trump enters his second term is very different from that of 2017. During his first term, the increased economic interconnection between the Gulf States and the US became a central feature of the administration’s foreign policy. Today, President Trump will find rising tensions connected to longstanding political issues that his adminstration will have to navigate. This month, in a rare event, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spoke publically about the plight of the Palestinian people and harshly criticized the Israeli government. “The Kingdom reiterates its condemnation and absolute refusal of the collective genocide committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people,” said the leader. Normalization talks are considered off the table by Saudi Arabia until Israel changes course.

While the first Trump adminstration had worked to facilitate a diplomatic normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the deal collapsed following Israel’s indiscriminate killings in Gaza and increased settler violence in the West Bank. Relations between Saudi Arabia and the US could also be impacted by the appointment of various Christian zionists to his cabinet and as ambassadors. Regardless of how eager US companies and investors from the Gulf States might collaborate, the governments of these countries understand that the plight of the Palestinians is close to the heart of their citizens, and a second Trump adminstration creates new challenges in how these relationships continue to take shape in the 21st century.